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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

BANK—Banking Locals

MISSION VALLEY BANK Year Founded: 2001 Core Business: Small business banking Projected revenue for 2001: $1.5 million Projected revenue for 2002: $3.9 million Employees: 14 Goal: To provide professional banking and customer service to Sun Valley businesses. Driving Force: Dedication to the community and its businesses. After losing one banking job in sun valley thanks to a corporate acquisition, an aspiring ceo decides building a new bank from scratch is the best opportunity Tamara Gurney stood in a vacant lot in Sun Valley one day recently and talked about her bank. “It’s going to have that colonial look. That makes it look friendlier than what a bank building usually does,” said Gurney, president and chief executive officer for the soon-to-open Mission Valley Bank. “We want people to feel that this is their bank,” said Gurney as she stood in the bank’s future parking lot, in the midst of Sun Valley’s industrial district and nearby horse country. She expects to cater to the area’s manufacturing businesses, its aircraft parts and auto dismantling firms and the eclectic variety of merchants that operate in the area. Gurney and her staff now work out of a portable building where the new bank will eventually stand. “We’re already getting a lot of inquiries and a lot of interest,” said Gurney, whose staff must turn away potential customers until the bank officially opens in May. “We get people who are asking us about opening an account and about when we’re going to open and things like that. So they’re excited,” said Marianne L. Cederlind, bank senior vice president. Until a little over a year ago, Gurney, a 20-year banking veteran, was chief financial officer of American Pacific State Bank of Sun Valley. “I was in line to be the CEO of the bank in the next couple of years. I had been groomed for that,” she said. That was before American Pacific was acquired by City National Bank. “So all of the sudden, I don’t have a job or a bank to go to and I’m thinking, ‘OK, what do I want to do?'” Gurney interviewed for CEO positions at other banks, but soon realized establishing her own bank in the Sun Valley area she was already familiar with was not exactly a hare-brained scheme. “Starting a bank by myself meant that I could bring my own sense of it,” she said. “My own culture, establish my own team and, from day one, start with a clean sheet of paper.” Soon enough, Gurney had 14 business associates, colleagues and friends who pooled their resources to create what would eventually be christened Mission Valley Bank. “We each put in $20,000 and then sought out investors,” she said. The group has nearly reached the $6 million goal needed to begin operation. But that’s about as easy as it gets. Projections call for a $640,000 loss the first year, then a $526,000 profit in the second year and $737,000 in the third, on gross revenue of $1.5 million, $3.9 million and $5.8 million, respectively. Gurney’s plan projects Mission Valley’s total assets exceeding $31 million in its first year and growing to $74 million by its third year. Jack Feldman, president and CEO of First Commerce Bank in Encino, a relatively small independent bank itself, said Mission Valley must develop a solid strategic plan if it wants to attract some of American Pacific’s former customers. “They have to have adequate capital to build market share and bring back old customers. It’s one of the keys and that’s why we were able to become successful here,” said Feldman. “They’ll have to cater to the small businesses which tend to be neglected by larger banks.” The prospective bank has completed the federal regulatory process that included everything from a stringent review of its assets, products and services to its safe and security systems. “I suppose it’s a little different than opening some other kind of business,” Gurney said. One of Mission Valley’s major stockholders and its future landlord, Jim Bagge, owns the acre parcel on Sunland Boulevard where he is building a $1.2 million, 15,000-square-foot building. Gurney said the building will house the bank, which will take up the bulk of the office space, while the remaining 5,000 square feet would be leased to other business tenants. But it won’t be completed until the end of the year and, due to interior construction of a steel vault and other needs, the bank staff won’t likely move into its new home for up to three months thereafter. “We’ll probably be here (in portable quarters) for 12 months, but that’s fine with us because this building is adequate for our needs,” Gurney said. Gurney’s return to Sun Valley is a homecoming for much of the management team that served with her at American Pacific State Bank. “That’s a big plus for us because they know so many business people here and they know the community,” she said. “This is an area that is hungry for a bank that provides great service.” In an era when many big banks encourage their customers to use the telephone, the Internet and automated teller machines, Gurney said, her bank will focus on doing business differently. “We want to provide personal service to our customers, though that’s an overused word in our business,” she said. Bill Hoseck, dean of the Cal State Northridge College of Business Administration and Economics who follows Valley business trends, said the bank’s success will depend on its marketing strategy. “Success depends on good customer relations,” Hoseck said, “and the bank has to come in and make it very clear that it wants to serve the community.”

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